Post navigation

Saving Confederate Heroes Like Nathan Bedford Forrest is Pointless

I’m not against saving history, but I am a little tired of hearing about Confederate heroes. Their heroic action? Saving states’ rights.

The reality? States’s rights to do what? Maintain slaves?

Per the DailyMail UK, there is anger in Selma, Alabama over repairing a statue of Confederate Nathan Bedford Forrest by the group Friends of Forrest. Forrest, the supportive friends say, “…was a self-made man and a brilliant tactician who defended Selma during the Union invasion in 1865.”

Oh, and he happened to be a successful slave trader, plantation owner, the first Grand Wizard of the KKK and accused of war crimes for shooting 200 black union soldiers after they surrendered at the Battle of Fort Pillow.

Maybe it’s time to put old Forrest’s statue in the dusty basement of ugly history. He’s not someone deserving of a statue. He remains as a lesson of history and the fear and hatred that existed during the late 1800s of African Americans (and almost every other race that wasn’t white).

The repair has to do with replacing Forrest’s head because it was stolen (damn kids!) and now there’s a reward for its return for $20,000. If it’s not returned, Friends of Forrest is going to spend $50,0000 to redo the head and place it back on the statue.

$50,0000 to replace the head of a known racist–and a violent one at that?

The plot of land where the bigot statue sits is private land, apparently owned by the Daughters of the Confederacy. There’s nothing to stop the renovation except to protest that the money could be better spent.